Under the Jeweled Sky

by Alison McQueen

  “Not so much,” Sophie said, her smile opening up a little.

  “English mustard or French?”

  “French.”

  “There, you see?” he said. “There’s nothing to it.”

  Lucien filled his mouth, nodding his satisfaction. Sophie watched him for a little while and wondered what it would be like to sit across a dinner table from him for the rest of her life, to wake up every morning under the same roof, to go to sleep at night in the same bed. She tried to picture him old, with gray hair, wearing striped pajamas, but the image escaped her. All she could see was the man before her, solid and straight-backed, entirely comfortable in the space he occupied. It must be nice to be a man, she thought, a man full of confidence and self-assurance. She would happily bet five pounds that he had never felt vulnerable for a moment in his life. He had probably won all sorts of trophies at school and had been in the first eleven. Men like that don’t like to lose. In all probability, he always knew exactly what he was going to do at any given moment. If only she could be him for a while, to know what it was like, to think what he was thinking. Sophie ate a little of her fish, but found that she wasn’t particularly hungry.

  “I don’t want to make a mistake,” she said.

  “We won’t.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “How does anybody know?” Lucien said patiently. “All any of us can do is to say yes and hope for the best, and I think we’re pretty much a perfect match. Don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry to have been such a wet blanket last Sunday. It’s just that you took me completely by surprise, that’s all. I really wasn’t expecting it. A part of me thought you were still in love with…” Sophie stopped short, glancing awkwardly away and feeling foolish.

  “Oh.” Lucien shifted uncomfortably. “I see.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sophie said quickly. “You know how people talk.”

  “Catherine and I were a bad habit that went on for far too long. I wasn’t in love with her, and she wasn’t in love with me either. She’s the last woman on earth I would have wanted to marry.” Lucien discarded his fork and lit a cigarette. “I pity the poor devil who ends up with her as his wife.”

  “She’s very beautiful,” Sophie said.

  “Well, good for her,” Lucien replied without looking up. He didn’t want to talk about Catherine Isherwood, the fine-looking daughter of a retired ambassador to the United Nations. There was a time when he had seriously considered her as wife material, but she had unnerved him with her unshakable confidence and consummate charm. It wouldn’t do for him to find himself outshone by a spouse who clearly had greater experience in the service than he did. Besides, her specialty area was the Arab states, and he was hoping that his trajectory would not take him down that path. He didn’t get on with them particularly well, as he had discovered to his cost when he inadvertently caused an uproar with the Emir of Oman by admiring a cigarette box crafted in the shape of a turtle, encrusted with precious and semi-precious stones. The Emir had promptly presented it to him, throwing the embassy into turmoil as they hunted to find a gift of similar grandeur to return to the prince. A cable had to be sent to the Foreign Office to explain the faux pas made by the junior member of the mission and lists had to be scoured to locate a suitable offering from the catalogue of diplomatic baubles. Some of these treasures had been doing the rounds for years, making it a tricky business to see that they never ended up in the same hands twice. Catherine Isherwood had dined out on the story for weeks, Lucien’s smile wearing ever thinner as she entertained her entourage at his expense, as she was prone to do.

  “I don’t want to rush into a decision that one of us might regret,” Sophie said.

  “Who’s rushing? Aren’t you in love with me? Not even a little bit?”

  Sophie blushed under his huge smile. How could she have doubted it? There was something about him that was irresistible, something beyond his broad-shouldered good looks and charming manner. He had a knack of making you feel like you were the only person in the world that mattered, a way of looking at you just so, his attentiveness noticing every little thing. She couldn’t have asked for more, yet she couldn’t help but wonder why he had chosen her, particularly when he and Catherine had been such an item, a woman from whom she couldn’t have been more different.

  They had all seen her, wafting through the Foreign Office every now and then as though she owned the place, dressed from head to toe in the latest Parisian fashions. Whenever she was in the building, the secretaries would whisper to each other about what she was wearing and how her hair was styled, speaking with envy or admiration, wishing they could be her, the very last word in sophistication. Lucien and Catherine had seemed like the model couple, and that they would end up getting married was practically a foregone conclusion. Everybody said so. Then suddenly it was all off, the news ripping through the secretarial offices like wildfire. They all assumed that he must have made her an offer and been turned down, but that was nothing more than idle speculation. Nobody in their department was senior enough to know what had really gone on.

  “Of course I am,” she smiled.

  “Then what’s to think about, hmm? You can make an honest man of me at last.”

  “One more thing.” Her smile wavered. She forced herself to look him straight in the eye. “Why me?”

  Lucien felt the intensity of her gaze and was for a moment taken aback. He hesitated, giving himself time to think. It was the same question he had asked himself as he had walked through Kensington Gardens last Sunday morning, cutting across the park on his way to Kendal Street rather than hailing a taxi from his flat on Queen’s Gate as he usually did. The episode with Catherine had taught him a salutary lesson, but there was no use in dwelling on the painful details. If anything, she had done him a favor. Beneath his sense of humiliation, he had known all along that it would have been a disastrous coupling, but God, she was beautiful, and passionate too. He would have been prepared to go a long way for the sake of keeping a woman like that, and had hinted to her plenty of times that he would never let her go.

  It would always elicit a smile from her, lying back on the pillow, smoking a cigarette, watching him with vague amusement as he gazed at her, naked against the sheets. She would joke with him that she had every intention of settling on an aristocrat, an earl at the very least, or an American tycoon with vulgar piles of new money. Lucien never got around to the proposal. It was as though she had sensed it coming before dropping him like a hot brick. He had felt like a fool and had sworn to himself that he would never again find himself in that position. But marry he must, and at least he had been spared the folly of making an imprudent choice.

  Yet marriage had been the very last thing on Lucien’s mind when Sophie Schofield caught his eye while he was still licking his wounds from the breakup. She had been called in to record the minutes of a meeting to do with cotton exports and had sat in the corner of the room, unaware that her dress had ridden up, exposing a pale glimpse of thigh. He had not been the only one to remark upon her, and by the time he located her desk in the typing pool shortly before lunchtime, Christopher Soames was already there, trying his luck. She had turned him down, having no doubt been forewarned by the other girls, and Lucien had kept her in his sights and had taken his time in making his approach. She might turn out to be a welcome distraction after Catherine, and he rather enjoyed the sport of seduction, particularly with the kind of woman who might take a little persuasion to get into bed.

  To his surprise, Sophie had turned out to be a great deal more interesting than he had bargained for. Not only did she point-blank refuse to sleep with him, but she also had the kind of background that might well be exactly what he should have been looking for all along. India, no less, and in a royal palace at that. He had had his eye on Delhi for a while. They were plum postings, bringing with them a great deal of luxury and very little in the way of real work. />
  Lucien had applied for Delhi six months ago and had been given the general impression from the Foreign Secretary that he might stand a better chance were he not still playing the bachelor, particularly after that business in Paris, although the rumor had never been proven. That sort of thing was rife, of course, but it didn’t do to stretch one’s luck too far. There was no doubt that he was made of the right stuff. He was a skilled tactician with the charm of the devil. With the right woman by his side, he could expect to go far, perhaps rising to the highest echelons of the service, if he played his cards right.

  A wife drew a neat line under various questions and uncertainties about a man’s character, and Lucien had bided his time for long enough. Unmarried men begged certain uncomfortable questions in the high offices, like whether they could be trusted in the society of the other company wives, or daughters for that matter. All the senior India postings were held by married men. The job required a rock-solid reputation, an air of propriety, to keep up the side even though the British were long gone. India’s problems were no longer of British concern. They could run the place into the ground if they so chose and kill each other to their heart’s content without any interference, and if the last ten years were anything to go by, they had had a pretty good run at it.

  “Why you?” He laughed a little. “Well, why not?”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “I have to know why you want to marry me.”

  Lucien’s smile faded. She had every right to ask, and this was no time to make light of it. “Your parents’ divorce affected you very badly, didn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not particularly.” She looked down into her lap. “I just don’t ever want to find myself that miserable.”

  “Did you go and see your mother?”

  “No.” She shook her head quickly. “I changed my mind.” She had decided not to tell him about the awful visit. It would serve no purpose other than to drag things up. She should never have mentioned it in the first place. There was nothing to be had there except misery. “It’s best left as it is. I don’t suppose she and I would have terribly much to say to each other after all this time.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Ten years almost.”

  “That must have been some argument.”

  “It was.”

  “Did she ever remarry?”

  “I have no idea,” Sophie said. “Even if she had, I don’t think I would have wanted to know about it. It wasn’t the easiest of relationships at the best of times.”

  “What about your father?”

  “What about him?”

  “Did he…”

  “Remarry? Not on your life.” Sophie pulled a face. “If anything, I think it must have put him off the idea of marriage for ever, and you can see for yourself how it has affected me.” She flicked her eyes to the ceiling in acknowledgement of her own skittishness. “Who would have thought I’d get into such a state over a proposal? Poor Dad. He never talked about any of it. It was as though it never happened. I think he preferred to allow people to draw their own conclusions. We must have made a very odd pair.”

  “You were a good daughter to have stayed with him for so long.”

  “How could I not? I felt terribly responsible for him, and he so needed looking after. There were times when I thought I’d never see him smile again; that’s how bad it was. I have no doubt that I would still be there had he not insisted I stop mollycoddling him.”

  “Quite right too, otherwise we never would have met, would we? And then where would I be?” He picked up her hand. “You are everything a man could possibly want in a wife, Sophie. You’re pretty and funny and clever, and we could have such a wonderful life together.”

  “I don’t want to let you down,” she said.

  “How could you possibly let me down? All you have to do is make a home, wherever we are, and stay by my side.” A thought passed across his mind, the same thought that had nagged at him since his walk home alone through the park last Sunday. “Sophie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is it the India posting that’s putting you off? I mean, I notice you never really talk about it.”

  “It feels like a long time ago,” she said. “A different life, a different place. India is a whole other country now, warts and all. When I was first there, it was just one big melting pot, not that I ever really saw that much of it. That was the beauty of the place, I think. It was all the wonderful differences that made India what it was.”

  “Did you ever go to Delhi?”

  “No,” she said. “Well, that’s not strictly true. We did pass though it, when we first went out, but I was still in my teens then and I hadn’t known what to expect and it was all rather overwhelming. I remember it being huge and utterly chaotic. I’d never seen anything like it.”

  “You were there before Partition?”

  “Yes, and during. My, what a terrible business that whole thing was. And now look what’s left. They’re still fighting, ten years later.”

  “Things have changed a lot since then,” Lucien said. “There’s no trouble in Delhi. All that’s way up in the north. Delhi is completely civilized now.” He cut into his steak again, dipping his knife in the mustard and buttering it yellow. “And the houses in the diplomatic districts are quite something.”

  Sophie smiled to herself. Delhi is civilized now. She wondered what he thought civilized meant, whether he thought it something simple like hot and cold running water and a well-cut suit, or whether he meant something deeper than that, like fairness and democracy and everybody having enough food to eat. Lucien noticed her looking at him.

  “Aren’t you tempted to go back and see how it has changed?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  Sophie toyed with her wine glass, twisting its stem, watching the candlelight reflected in the rich red Burgundy he had chosen. Something special, he had said. Of course she had thought about it. She had thought of little else. Could she go back to India? Could she really cope with it? With all the feelings and memories that would be bound to come back to her? She didn’t know.

  “That’s a very serious expression you’re wearing all of a sudden,” Lucien said.

  “I’m sorry. My mind had wandered.”

  “To India?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it so bad?”

  “No.” She took up her fork, picking at the vegetables on her plate. “It was wonderful actually, in every sense of the word. I have never seen such beauty, nor such squalor. Sometimes it feels like it was just a dream I once had.”

  “You know how important this posting would be to me. I won’t lie to you about it.”

  “I know.”

  “But if that is what’s putting you off, I’ll turn it down.”

  “No. You mustn’t do that. I know you’ve been keen to go, and if that’s the way you feel, then that is what you must do.”

  “You know what they say about India,” Lucien said. “Once it’s got its hooks into you, you never want to leave.”

  “Oh.” Sophie reached for a sip of water. “Is that what they say?”

  “You of all people should know. It certainly seduced your father into staying, didn’t it? Aren’t you looking forward to going back?” He watched her face, the small shift in the line of her mouth.

  How quickly the years slip by. How strange it was to think of the person she had once been, like leafing through a photograph album of faded sepia memories conjuring names long since unheard. She had thought about it every day, upon first waking and before she fell asleep at night. There was nothing she could do about it. It was part of her landscape, like waking up to find the same person sitting expectantly in a chair beside her, waiting for her to open her eyes, to remind he
r of what once was. It followed her, wherever she went, the constant specter waiting for her to turn and see it, its gaze never leaving her. She had learned to live with it, and as the years passed by, the specter moved further away, finally revealing days when she would wake up and it would not be there, the chair empty.

  Sophie adjusted the napkin in her lap. “I don’t know. It’s funny the way things turn out sometimes, isn’t it? The places we end up?”

  “I’ll say.” Lucien paused his fork. “But I want you to know that the only thing that matters to me is you. So long as you’re beside me, I wouldn’t care if they posted me to the North Pole.”

  “I jolly well would! I can’t bear being cold.” Sophie took a sip of wine and shivered.

  “Then what could be more perfect? We’ll be living in the lap of luxury, and you already know the country.”

  “You’re very persuasive.”

  “Of course I am. It’s what I’m paid for.”

  “You realize it’s not easy, to adjust to a new place and live in a foreign country?”

  “Sophie, darling, I think you forget that I have been doing this for some time now.”

  “Not as a married man, you haven’t. It’s easy to live in bachelor quarters and have everything done for you while you swan around pleasing yourself. Having a wife in tow is a different matter entirely.”

  “Only if she’s a harridan.”

  “Lucien!” Sophie feigned offense.

  “Oh, come on, Sophie! We’ll work it out together, won’t we? And one day, when we’re old and gray, we’ll look back on this day and laugh about it.”

  “I want to have a good marriage.”

  “And so do I.”

  “Promise me that you’ll always tell me if I do anything to make you unhappy?” Lucien found himself unexpectedly moved by her sudden distress. “Promise me that you won’t keep things to yourself or let resentments build up, no matter what they are or how silly they might sound?”